Microsoft discontinued support for Windows XP earlier this month, which prompted more than one security scare. However, Microsoft and various security outfits were quick to reassure the public. Even though there was no official support, XP could be patched and kept secure.

However, it is now starting to look as if the biggest problem was caused by none other than Redmond. More specifically, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSSE) is killing XP boxes, just in case we needed an extra dose of irony and sarcasm this morning. Microsoft discontinued support for XP on April 8, but it is still updating MSSE for XP users. The last update to the Anti Malware Service for Windows XP seems to be the culprit.

Who needs an infection when you’ve got Microsoft?

Microsoft Security Essentials is the source of the problem. For some reason the security suite starts acting up and cases XP systems to slow down dramatically, rendering them practically useless in some situations.

The bug was narrowed down to MsMpEng.exe. This is the process that needs to be killed in order to fix the problem. It’s not as easy as it seems. Users need to disable Microsoft Security Essentials to get rid of the issue, which can be tricky for novice users, especially office folk.

Users have to open Windows Run, type “services.msc” and disable it on startup. Hopefully MSE will not load on reboot and things will be back to normal. Not much of a problem for techies and enthusiasts, but most tech savvy users migrated from XP years ago.

IT departments aren’t amused

The problem appears to be affecting loads of XP boxes worldwide, but since it’s relatively new we don’t have any exact figures or estimates for that matter.

We talked to an IT manager at a local insurance company and we were told that it’s quite common.

“It knocked out about 20 of our machines yesterday. It’s still going on, we lost five more this morning, in under an hour,” we were told.

Mind you, we are talking about a relatively small branch office. The insurance firm in question, Euroherc, is one of the leading insurers in the region. Our source told us that the number of affected machines should be multiplied by “dozens” to take into account all branch offices in the region, which are experiencing the exact same problem.

Luckily IT departments are used to this sort of thing and the problem is being addressed. Since it’s not too difficult to resolve, most XP boxes were up and running in a matter of hours.

Home users and SMBs are getting the worst of it

However, not every company has an IT department and not every user can deal with the problem without assistance.

A retailer told us that his office has been taking angry calls from dozens of consumers who bought XP boxes or licenses over the last few years. People are upset and retailers are losing credibility through no fault of their own. Needless to say they are not happy.

Explaining the problem and guiding users through the necessary steps is not easy and it’s time consuming. Worse, there are a lot of XP users who simply can’t deal with it on their own, from pensioners to SMBs who don’t really care about tech as they have a couple of cheap boxes to sort out emails and print stuff.

Of course, there are those who insist that it’s all a grand Redmond conspiracy to get people to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, but like all conspiracy theories out there, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Someone made a mistake, a big mistake, that’s all.

Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to get people to get their machines off Windows XP.

Incentives include a $50 gift card, 90 days of free support, and free help with data transfer if you buy a brand new Windows machine from its online store. The listed machines include four desktops ranging from $700 to $1300, and four laptops priced between $280 and $700. A bunch of 2-in-1 PCs and tablets are also available The free “premium” support comes via phone, chat, and sales channels.

The computer giant has collaborated with data migration service Laplink to help you easily transfer all your files, settings, and user profiles from your old machine to your new one. It is all through the Microsoft store and since most people don’t buy a PC through that it is largely academic. There are still a lot of XP machines still out there – latest figures suggest that nearly 18 per cent of the world is still running the OS.

While Microsoft will officially retire its Windows XP operating system early next year, Google will continue to support its Chrome browser for the platform through at least early 2015.

Google said that it will keep sending out updates and security patches to the Windows XP version of Google Chrome "until at least April 2015." This might keep many XP users still in business as many of the faults within XP are delivered through the browser. Microsoft will not be doing anything to XP after April 8 2014.

"Many organizations still run dozens or even hundreds of applications on XP and may have trouble migrating. Our goal is to support Chrome for XP users during this transition process," Google said in a blog.

In case you are the one people that like the new hardware platforms and processors, but at the same time prefer old Microsoft operating systems you are not going to be happy about the fact that AMD won't have Windows XP support for Kabini processors.

Windows XP is an 11 year old platform, but it still runs on many desktops and notebooks, especially in small businesses, and for example Brazos and Brazos 2.0 platforms at least had legacy support for this ancient OS. Kabini officially doesn’t have even legacy support, at least according to some plans that were shared with some of their partners.

Our sources are adding that no support means no official support for the platform, but some support might be added in the exception process. This leaves the actual level of support very cloudy but from what we understand not everything would work on Windows XP Kabini based machine.

Windows Vista will also be excluded from the list of supported operating systems but I don’t think anybody will get upset about this one. Windows 7 and 8 will get full support that includes new feature support, bug fixes, updates as well as technical assistance.

We are quite sure AMD will add support for future Windows iterations, such as Blue for Kabini as many people were not happy with Windows 8 and want to jump on board with the next one.

Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system may have been all the rage once, but it’s pretty clear that its future holds nothing but that colorful place in winheaven, where operating systems go to die.

Upcoming Assasin’s Creed 3 is among the latest games to dump XP for its shiny siblings. The game’s minimum requirements list Core 2 Duo E6700/Athlon 64 X2 6000+ and 512MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant card with Shader Model 4.0 but XP support is gone.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 team has also decided against supporting old-man-XP and it appears as if it’s just a matter of time before actual inclusion of it becomes newsworthy. Naturally, both these games will support Vista, 7 and 8.

Having said that, yours truly would rather put a finger in his eye and twirl it around singing “Shiny Happy People” than spend another minute in Vista. Heck, even Windows 3.1 suddenly started sounding like music to my ears.

Microsoft has posted new set of system requirements for its new Office 2013 suite and it looks like Windows Vista and Windows XP are not going to be supported.

The lack of Windows XP support does not come as a surprise and since Vista has been already dropped from Internet Explorer 10 support list, same thing is happening with Office 2013. The new Office 2013 will only be compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 R2/2012.

The rest of the system requirements are pretty high, or to be precise, higher than what we used to see from Microsoft, at least when Office suite is concerned. The CPU is set at 1GHz or faster x64/x86, 1GB of memory for x86 and 2GB for x64, 3GB of available storage space, almost every browser since IE8, Firefox 10.x, Apple Safari 5 or Chrome 17.x, v3.5 or higher .NET version, a touch enabled device for multi-touch functions (noting that all features and functionallity will be accessable via keyboard and mouse), and DirectX 10 capable graphics card for hardware acceleration.

We already talked about Office 2013 and its looks here. You can find the full set of system requirements here. (via Tweaktown.com)

ArenaNet is dropping support for older Windows Operating Systems for Guild War users. The company has announced that after June 14th if you have not upgraded your Windows OS to at least Windows XP, Guild Wars will no longer be playable when the latest update is released.

While the studio does not like making these types of decisions, the move is necessary to improve security and enhance account management, as well as other things. ArenaNet claims that the move will only affect about .05% of the total player base, which actually is pretty surprising considering that Microsoft has not been supporting these Operating Systems for some time; and the majority of users have moved on to at least Windows XP by now.

ArenaNet has no plans to shut down GuildWars, despite the fact that a new version is in development. The company says as long as it has an active player base they will not be shutting it down. In fact, the developer believes that you could see a lot of players having an account and playing both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.

ArenaNet still has no official release date for Guild Wars 2 yet, but sources tell us that things are moving in the right direction, and there could be an announcement soon, but we don’t have a clue yet on how soon that is.

The AVAST Virus Lab has identified un-patched and often pirated versions of Windows XP as the main vector for rootkits infections.

Data from a six-month study catalogued over 630,000 samples and found that 74 per cent of infections originated from Windows XP machines, compared to 17 per cent for Vista and only 12 per cent from Windows 7 machines. While Windows XP may be old, it is still the most common operating system around the globe with 49 per cent of Avast! antivirus users having it on their computers compared to the 38 per cent with Windows 7 and the 13 per cent with Vista.

Przemyslaw Gmerek, the AVAST expert on rootkits and lead researcher said that one issue with Windows XP is the high number of pirated versions, especially as users are often unable to properly update them because the software can’t be validated by the Microsoft update. Because of the way root kits attack and stay concealed, deep in the operation system, rootkits are a perfect weapon for stealing private data.

More recent operating systems like Windows 7 are more resilient to rootkits, but not immune, he said.

Despite several stays of execution, due mostly to the failure of Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has finally signed XP's death warrant. It has had more than eight years on the top an is arguably the most successful software in the history of the world. But now Microsoft is no longer allowing PC makers to legally pre-install its venerable WIndows XP operating system on new computers.

Most computer makers topped shipping PCs with Windows XP pre-installed some time ago. Dell was the last bastion, cutting off XP installations back in September. However a small number of PC makers still ship XP on some of their machines. The decision might harm companies and organizations who need to upgrade or replace hardware, but either can’t or won’t move on from Windows XP.

But the writing has been on the wall since 2009 when the Imperium pulled the plug on mainstream support for WIndows XP. Microsoft will be offering “extended” support for the operating system all the way to 2014. duled for the first half of 2011.

Acer's has been showing off its attempt at combining Google's Android mobile software and Microsoft's Windows XP OS in the same netbook.

The Acer Aspire One AOD255 netbook uses Android as a quick-booting operating system and then Windows as the main operating system. You can use the Acer Configuration Manager for Android to control which OS to boot.

The netbook has a 10.1-inch screen and has Intel's Atom N450 microprocessor inside. It has 1GB of DDR2 DRAM as well as a 160GB hard disk drive (HDD) for storage. The device comes with a 3-cell lithium-ion battery.

Although people attending the Taipei Computer Applications Show were not told when the device will be formally launched on world markets, it looks like the beast will end up in the shops for about 260 euro and should be available soon.